Weekend: Friday and Saturday
I will write this blog in chronological order, from Friday through Sunday. The title "Finale", of course has to do with the World Cup final, which was on Sunday night. But I'll get to that when the time comes. (Actually, I only made it through Saturday. I'll get to Sunday tomorrow night). For now, I backtrack to Friday...As any diligent employee does, I'm sure, I was counting down the minutes to the weekend. I knew that it was going to be jam packed with excitement, but little did I know how much!
On Friday, my plan was to get off of work and head directly to a homegroup that is organized through the Berlin International Church, which I have decided to call my church home while in Berlin. The homegoup started at 6:45 and I didn't get off of work until around 5:30, so with the commute on the S and U-Bahn (The subway system) I did not have a lot of time. In fact, I wasn't even able to stop for dinner, but that turned out to be okay. When I got out of the U-bahn station at my stop, it started to pour rain and I wasn't prepared for it. I was wearing shorts, a t-shirt, and sandals. But I wandered around a little bit, and with the help of my Tom-tom (portable GPS navigation system) I was able to find the address of where I was going before I was completely drenched.
When I got there I found out that the group was having a special going-away party for one of the members who had been working here in Berlin for a few years as a missionary with AOG and who was returning to the US for a 6 month furlough. Included in this party was a great dinner that had a wide variety of international dishes, so I got dinner afterall, and it was delicious. The apartment where we met was also very nice. I don't know how old the building was that it was in, but it definitely wasn't new and like the typical shoebox style apartments in the US and Canada. The ceilings were at least 12 feet, if not even higher, and instead of having wooden moulding around the top of the walls, there was intricate plasterwork. It was beautiful. I am sure that it took a long time to do, but it was sure a nice change from what I am used to.
The homegroup was a different situation than I am used to as well. The group ranges in age from about 20 to probably mid 50's and it is co-ed. So it was very different from the all male 20-something year old group that I am in back home. It is neat to experience that sort of a group, but I don't think that I would like it long term. There is a lack of intimacy and real accountability in a group like that. But it will be neat for the next couple of week and then again in the fall to see this dynamic.
So I met a few new people at that. I don't know that it will result in there being any opportunities for socialization outside of church functions or not, but we'll see. The one guy that is about my age is pretty overwhelmed with work and other things going on, so I don't think he does much else right now. But it is alright. At least my Friday's are now accounted for. That's about the most important night. With dinner being a 3 hour event every night, my weeknights are pretty much packed up. So it's the weekends that are the most important.
The small group ended at around 10:30 and then I found my way back home to my hotel and got here around midnight. Then I chatted with Yinghong on the phone for a little while and we arranged what we were going to do on Saturday...
On Saturday the plan was to go to the "Museum Island" in downtown Berlin. I had no idea where it was, but it turns out that in my meandering around downtown on my own I had been within a few blocks of it already on several occasions. But this time I had Yinghong with me, and she was a great tourguide. I should mention at this point that I took a lot of pictures on this day of everything that I'll be talking about. I don't think they are in any particular order, but the picture titles should be enough for you to follow what each is. The link is at the bottom of this blog.
We began by walking down Unter Den Linden Strasse to the east from the Brandenberg Tor. The first thing that we came to was the National Library, so I had a picture taken on the fountain in the courtyard of it. We didn't go in though. Next we walked by a big statue of Napoleon that is in the middle of the street, so I took a picture of that. After that we came to Humboldt University, where Einstein (and many others http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humboldt_University_of_Berlin) studied. I took a picture of the stairway in the entrance. The rest of the university looked pretty dull though. The halls were dark and plain...really not very impressive.
Next we saw an outdoor display of bears which had been painted, one for each country, that was in an open square. Berlin's symbol is the bear, and the bears were there to symbolize that Berlin was welcoming the world for the World Cup. I got 4 pictures here. Two of Yinghong, one by the Bahrain bear which we agreed was the best painted one, and one by the China bear. We got one picture of me by the Canada bear, and I took one of the US bear for all of my American readers. There were some other really cool designed ones as well, but I didn't feel like taking pictures of a whole much of painted bears.
Infront of the bears was a monument of books that was indicating the place where Hitler had his famous book buring. It shows famous German scientists and philosophers. So I took a picture of that.
The next thing that we saw was a monument to people who have suffered and died due to war and tyranny. It is called the new guardhouse. It is a great big empty stone room with a statue of a woman clutching her dead child. It is quite the ominous feeling to go in there, and very few people did. Many would go up to the door and look in, but wouldn't enter. I went in though and took two pictures, as well as one of the plaque on the front that described the monument. I encourage you to read it, as it is really interesting.
After this, we went into the National Museum. The downstairs had the German history from 1919 to the present. What we didn't know was the that upstairs had all of the history from as far back as they know until 1918. Unfortunately, on Saturday they were closing at 2pm because I think there was some special event happening there for the World Cup. But we took what time we had and looked through the history of Germany from the 20th century. It was neat to see that history from a German perspective. I was almost expecting to see it skewed to downplay the attrocities of the nazi era, but I was surprised to see that there wasn't. I took several pictures here.
At 2 o'clock we left and headed towards the Pergamon museum which has a lot of exhibits from Assyria, Greece, and Rome from about 1000BC to 750AD. By the time we got there, I was feeling pretty tired already from walking around so much all day, so I didn't take in much of the history of what I was looking at. Yinghong had been there several times too, so I didn't take the time to listen to the headset that I had. But I took several pictures of some of the more interesting exhibits, including the Ishtar Gate of Babylon, which was huge! It was quite amazing to see.
It was 5pm by the time that we left this museum, but we weren't nearly done yet. Next we continued down the street to the Berliner Dom, which is a massive church. I took a whole bunch of picturs because I cannot even begin to describe how ornate and beautiful it was. The pictures didn't turn out quite like I wanted to, but there were so many people in there taking pictures that I couldn't stand just anywhere and take my time. But they are alright.
After this, we walked around a little, grabbed some ice cream, and then sat in a park to rest for a while. At around 8, it started to rain though, so we hurried over to the Nikolai area to find a place to have dinner. We found this amazing Italian restaurant and since the Germany consolation final was being played at the same time, we were the only ones in the restaurant. I think that the staff thought that we were dating though because they lit the candle on our table and then turned the restaurant lights down. Yinghong and I laughed at that. But we had a great dinner. Which reminds me, I had some great steak with tomato and chevre cheese on it. Dad, you would like that, I think. I don't know exactly how they did it, but I imagine that you just grill your steak how you like it, then put a slice of tomato on the top and then cover it with about 1/8" of chevre and put it back over the heat for a few minutes until the cheese is melted and the tomato is softened. It was really good.
When we left, the Germany game was just ending, and Germany won, so the city was insane. We were just down from the fan mile, so we walked past hundreds of thousands of screaming and celebrating fans and then found a place to sit and just people watched and yelled out "Deutschland!!!" for a while before we finally decided that we should head home.
Now, I realize that I still have Sunday to talk about, but that will take a while too and I am tired now. So I'll post that later. I don't have any pictures from Sunday anyways.
Here is the link for my pictures:
http://s68.photobucket.com/albums/i6/jeff_zekveld/July%208%20Berlin%20Museums/?start=all
Peace and blessings,
posted by JZ @ 3:35 PM
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